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You’ve worked hard to maintain and maybe even pay off your biggest investment: your home.

But do you know how to really protect it?

According to the Department of Justice, about nine in 10 crimes against seniors involve property.

The not-for-profit Burglary Prevention Council and Intermatic, Inc., a lighting and home settings company, have partnered to offer seniors some simple safety precautions to help reduce their vulnerability to crime.

• Place good locks on all exterior doors — dead-bolt locks with a minimum one-inch throw.
• Always lock the door when leaving the house, even if only for a few minutes.
• Secure sliding-glass doors with commercially available bars or locks, or put a wooden dowel in the door track.
• Install high-quality locks on all windows, particularly those at ground level. Lock double-hung windows by sliding a small-headed bolt or nail through a hole drilled at a slight downward angle in a top corner of the inside sash and partway into the outside sash.
• Light the perimeters of the home using low voltage or solar lighting around porches, decks, entrances, walkways, pathways and other outside areas.
• Trim any bushes or trees that hide doors or windows.
• Do not hide keys under doormats or in mailboxes or flowerpots. Give an extra key to a trusted neighbor.
• Mark your valuable property such as televisions, VCRs, computers, cameras and stereos with your driver’s license number. Borrow an engraver from your local police department. Keep a record of your property in a safe place.
• Consider installing an alarm system for monitoring for burglary, fire and medical emergencies.
• If you live in an apartment, make sure that entrances, parking areas, hallways, stairways, laundry rooms and other common areas are well lighted. Mailboxes should be in a publicly traveled, well-lighted area.

Quotable
“The key is to make a home look occupied and protected using simple, common-sense measures such as indoor and outdoor timers or home controls for lighting and small appliances.”

— Art Noparstak, marketing manager of Intermatic, Inc., and
a board member of the Burglary Prevention Council n